Kernel releases can mean great things. This often comes in the form of new features, such as new schedulers or overclocking. Some help save battery life, others help performance, and some still offer improved stability. Some are just awesome at face value. The Samsung Galaxy S Plus now has a 3.0.x kernel.

XDA Senior Member ivendor, along with support from XDA Recognized Developer arco68, have released the 3.0.x kernel for the Galaxy S Plus. It’s currently for developers only. It was released for the purpose of working out the kinks and making it perfect. The current list of what’s working and what isn’t includes:

Working List:
-3G & Calls
-Audio
-Battery
-Touchscreen
-Touch keypad
-Wifi
-Bluetooth
-Accelerometer
-Light sensor
-Proximity Sensor
-Vibration
-GPS

And not working:

Not working list:
- Both Cameras
- Digital Compass

That’s not too bad for a build released solely for development at this time. There are also some issues with display and USB, which are listed as partially working. Ivendor opened up the repository for this kernel, so anyone can submit a patch or fix. While there are test builds, it is recommended that end users wait until a stable release comes out to run it on a permanent basis.

To learn more, check out the original thread.

Floating Touch is a rather unique and impressive feature that was initially introduced by Sony on the Xperia Sola. It basically allows the user to “touch the screen without touching the screen.”  Hovering your finger over the screen, the device interprets this as a touch. This is done by making use of the sensitive capacitive touch panels found on modern smartphones.

Initially developed for interaction with a specific set of live wallpapers, the technology has been ported to interact with  the complete user interfaces of the Xperia Sola and Samsung Galaxy SL. Now, we can add the Samsung Galaxy S Plus to this growing list.

Having read the news on the Galaxy SL port, XDA Forum Member matorno1 has done some investigating and has managed to port floating touch to the Galaxy S Plus. As with the previous device ports, things may be a little finicky, and using it will  require some practice.  Some basic settings adjustments have also been suggested by atorno1 that require some trial and error. Just make sure you don’t  go too far with these adjustments and end up completely disabling screen touches!

If you want to try out floating touch on your Galaxy S Plus, head over to the modification thread.

Not too long ago, we brought you the wonderful news that the original Samsung Galaxy S variants got official CM10. Unfortunately, there were a few versions that were left out, including the Samsung Galaxy S Plus I9001.

The first push to get AOSP Jelly Bean of any kind began with this thread which is currently maintained by XDA Forum Member demon434. It helped give the community a place to troubleshoot issues and test preliminary builds. Now, XDA Senior Member Doomsday94 has released an unofficial preview build of CyanogenMod 10.

The build is a little shaky, hence why it is called a preview. There are a number of things working, to include:

Audio
Video (sometimes youtube crashes)
Receiving and making calls
Proximity sensor
Wifi
Bluetooth
USB mass storage
HW accelerated gui
HW accelerated video
60% project butter

And here are the things not working:

headset audio
camera
full butter experience
many other things

As you can expect, this is definitely not daily driver material just yet. However, it provides Galaxy S Plus users with a base from which to proceed and a known number of bugs to squash. It may not be long until there is a more stable version for users to flash.

For more information, check out the original thread.